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Photograph of Ray Lorrison

Ray Lorrison

Ray belongs to: Royal British Legion Seaman's Mess

Ray was born in Moon Street, South Shields. After leaving school Ray went to cookery school before going to sea with the merchant navy in March 1937. He left the sea in 1953.

Ray was interviewed by Carl Greenwood on 30 November 2005. The interview took place at the Interviewee's living room and lasted 39 minutes and 44 seconds.

Photograph of Ray Lorrison
Photograph of Ray Lorrison

The ship's cook's routine

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"Well, the steward used to make all the menus out and I just had to carry on and cook them"

Well, the steward used to make all the menus out and I just had to carry on and cook them. But on the night time, the meats and things that we needed, we had to go down at night time and cook whatever we needed and put it out in the cold room.

And the next morning I was up at half past five, the second cook used to come up at about six o’clock but by this time I had mostly…we used to cook the breakfast first and then I used to carry on doing the dinner and I didn’t have much time really because…you were supposed to get two hours off in the afternoon but there were no cakes or anything like that so I had to make cakes and things.

And one time we had 125 crew but that was with naval and army that was aboard the ship. But they weren’t on long. The actual crew was only 70 on that ship,tanker. But we had a great skipper, a good chief engineer, and the crew, being Irish, you know, you expect a lot of trouble, but we did have a little bit of bother with them but that was only in the crew.

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Roles and Routines | Work

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